TALKING UNDER CONDITIONS OF ALTERED AUDITORY FEEDBACK: DOES ADAPTATION OF ONE VOWEL GENERALIZE TO OTHER VOWELS?

Evidence of perceptual learning has been found in various sensory systems, including the auditory system, but little research has examined the specificity of such learning. In the current study, participants' auditory feedback was altered in real time such that they heard their production of "head" shifted completely to sound like "had". This feedback modification induces a compensatory change in speech production. Following a period of training with this auditory feedback, subjects were tested on the vowels in "hid" and "hayed" to determine whether learning on one vowel generalized to nearby vowels. All participants produced a reliable compensation to the altered feedback, but there was no transfer of this compensation to the other vowels. Production of the nearby vowels also had no effect on the unlearning of the trained vowel.